I happen to have a Christian worldview. This colors everything I ponder, and (hopefully) it colors my daily life. But I wasn’t born with this worldview. I’ve been developing it all my adult life… and my Christian worldview is probably different than your Christian worldview in the details.

For example, I’m an old earth creationist. I believe the universe to be about 13.8 billion years old and the earth to be about 4.5 billion… yet I still hold the Bible as inerrant. How do I do this? Sorry… that’s not today’s topic! But the fact that I do it is critical to today’s challenge.

You see, there’s a reason I fear no data (and, therefore, no physicalist). For many decades I have been explaining the Bible to myself… and explaining myself to the Bible… and explaining the physical creation to myself… and explaining the physical creation to the Bible. As such, I’ve developed a hearty brand of biblical inerrancy — but it’s not free. It cost me the young earth.

Young earth creationists cannot revel in one of the greatest gifts ever given to Christian apologetics — “Big Bang” cosmology. The scientific establishment fought this cosmology (in spite all the evidence for it) even up into the 1960s — and you can see why. If the universe is itself eternal, then God need not apply. But if the universe had a beginning, that causes philosophical disquiet among thinking atheists. Why? Because it opens the door for a “beginner.”

Besides, (they might think)… that pesky Bible out and out says the universe began… and we would hate it if those Christians were right and Carl Sagan was wrong!

But that’s what we have — and you young-earthers are missing out… while back at the ranch, this apologist is doing handsprings.

Many of you probably suspected I was old earth, but today makes it official. I have a hearty belief that the Bible is God’s inspired word because it unflinchingly faces down every comer — physical or metaphysical… but Christians need to take Romans 1:18-20 more seriously. We are responsible to give the creation a hard look and make those conclusions part of our worldview.

Many of you know that I serve at Got Questions Ministries as a writer. They are a young earth organization, but they still let me bang away from my old earth position. The thing is, we fight the same fight when it’s the Christian worldview vs reductionism (materialism, physicalism). We both support biblical inerrancy, and today I respond to a rather diffuse challenge to the Bible that is based on one of their articles.

Why don’t you join me? I make use of the Big Bang… but there’s much more going on.

Click here to read the article referenced above. For questions, comments or to join the Monday Musings mailing list, contact us at ep@mainsailministries.org.